HomeMy WebLinkAboutCB Minutes 2019-11-07 Town of Ithaca Conservation Board (CB) Meeting
November 7, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Final Minutes
Members present: Hannah George—Vice Chairperson, Elizabeth Hageman, James Hamilton,
Eva Hoffmann, Michael Roberts —Chairperson.
Staff: Michael Smith, Senior Planner.
Guests: Lori Brewer and Karen Johnson Feltham.
Mike Roberts started the meeting at 5:30 PM. The guests were introduced and spoke briefly
about why they were there. Lori Brewer, a resident of the Town of Ithaca for 16 years, is
interested in all the various topics the CB brochure describes and Karen Johnson Feltham, is a
City of Ithaca resident, but would be interested in joining the Board as an associate member.
Mike R. mentioned that the DEC has changed its "bait and shoot" guidelines for one of the CB's
topics, deer control, in the Town. It used to allow this method 150 feet from a road, but has
increased the distance to 300 feet. This has in effect eliminated its use within Cayuga Heights.
1. Persons to be heard: None
2. Members' Concerns: Hannah reported that she contacted TCAT about placing bike racks at
rural bus stops for the convenience of bikers. TCAT responded that they don't have the money
for them, but that they want to try to get them.
Eva mentioned the problem with TCAT and other buses keeping their motors going while
waiting at bus stops, especially along Green Street outside the Public Library. They create a
problem both by polluting the air and making a lot of noise. She knows that in other cities, like
at the Port Authority bus station in New York City, there are signs saying that buses are only
allowed to leave the motors on for 3 minutes after they have stopped there. The response she got
when she called TCAT a number of years ago to ask them to shut their motors off too, was that
they needed to be on to cool the buses in summer and heat them in winter. She feels that if they
can make the buses function in New York with the motors turned off, they should be able to do it
here as well. She would like the CB to write a letter to TCAT about that. Mike R asked Eva to
prepare such a letter. She said she will need to confirm the NY City rules first.
3. Chairperson and Coordinator Reports:
Chairperson: No report.
Coordinator, Mike Smith: Mike reported that the Planning Board has nothing scheduled for the
first December meeting. He mentioned a stream buffer workshop to be held from 5 to 8 PM on
Nov. 21 at the Tompkins County History and Culture Center. The Town will pay fees for any of
us who are interested in attending.
The Town received a grant for work on the South Hill Recreation Way. Jim Engel (White Oak
Nursery) has been hired and has started to remove invasive plants there, to be ready to plant
native species instead in the spring.
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4. Approval of minutes from October 3, 2019: Mike R. moved approval of the minutes as
written and James seconded the motion. The minutes were approved.
5. Continue to review and update the Conservation Board brochure: Mike S. described how he
had incorporated the text suggestions members had made and replaced some of the photos with
newer ones. Eva said she felt most of the text was a bit hard to read because of the thin lines and
small size of the fonts used. She suggested making more of it in bold font and using some of the
margins for extra space. Mike S. will try to do that.
6. Discussion of NYSEG's electric transmission line upgrade project(Ithaca Line 981): Hannah
has looked into this project in more detail and feels that NYSEG's evaluation of steel, rather than
wood, as the better choice for its lifetime use, is a good one. The line goes mostly in a north-
south direction from Etna, with a branch coming off it to the west, toward the East Hill Plaza
area. A discussion followed about whether the lines could be placed underground, at least in the
area close to the housing, offices and businesses at East Hill Plaza, where The Town and Cornell
have planned to expand those uses. It seems it may not be feasible to bury high power lines like
those in this project. Mike R. said it was not easy to get access to the information in what we
were provided, but that he managed to do it. He may want to look into it some more. Hannah
said that NYSEG just wanted to alert us to the project before it goes to the Planning Board.
7. Regular Reports and Updates:
a. Environmental Review Committee (Mike R.): No report.
b. Scenic Resources Committee (Eva): Eva stated that the view sign and a bench have now
been installed at the scenic pull-off site off Rt. 96B near the Longview Retirement Community.
It is located on State of New York land, making it accessible to anyone, as planned from the
beginning. It looks good, but she is concerned about the bench being lower than she expected,
making it harder to see the view while seated on it. She feels it is entirely her responsibility
because she didn't check the relationship between the sign height and the bench seat height as
carefully as she and the SRC committee members did for the first sign at East Shore Park. She
will look into easy solutions to remedy this concern.
c. Communications Committee (Will): No report.
d. Tompkins County Environmental Management Council (EMC), (Vladimir): No report.
e. Six Mile Creek Volunteer Monitoring Program (James): The morning after Halloween
sampling of storm water was done. BMI samples are pickled at Langmuir Laboratory and are
waiting to be analyzed by volunteers on Thursday.
f. Cornell Botanic Gardens Natural Areas Program (James): James reported that volunteers
have worked on four projects in the Cornell Natural Areas:
1. Weeding woody invasive plants, getting rid of bittersweet and Norway maples.
2. Planting native trees and perennials below Oak Avenue.
3. Weeding invasive plants in Fitzpatrick Fen and McLean Bogs.
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4. Collected fringed gentian seeds. After drying and separating the seeds from their
pods, Robert Wesley will plant them at a different test site nearby, where he's had a
bulldozer thoroughly disturb the soil.
g. City of Ithaca Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission (Hannah): No
update.
8. Other Business: The CB had positive comments and a brief discussion about the new
neighborhood code, which had been sent to us by email.
There were some questions: a recent speaker talked about reforestation of Town land—did
anything happen about that? Is there a Town initiative near Coy Glen? Elizabeth said there is
flooding there now; driveways have been flooded out on Rt. 13A. Hannah said she would put
Elizabeth in touch with a reforestation group.
9. Review 2019 Work Goals /Discuss December A eg nda: No report.
10. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at around 6:50 PM.
Respectfully submitted by Eva Hoffmann
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